𝖓𝖊𝖛𝖊𝖗 𝖉𝖎𝖊; lost boys

one

"Max, these boxes aren't gonna carry themselves!" Maxine's mother sang from somewhere inside as she stood on the stoop, sizing up the cedar shake face of their newest house. It was brown, big, and in her unimportant opinion: ugly, but they had lived in uglier.

After her mother's most recent failed relationship, a move was in order. Mom did this every time, and it had gotten old a long time ago, but Maxine didn't have much of a choice. Where her mother went, she went, stuffing her suitcase into the worn-out station wagon while Mom put the car in gear and raved about the next adventure.

This time, it was Santa Carla. As if a move in the middle of the year wasn't jarring enough, Mom had decided that this particular breakup needed a more extreme detox: a cross-country reset from quiet Connecticut to the southern coast of California.

"I think I just need to completely reinvent myself," her mother had laughed as they coasted through Nevada, looking in the rear view to check the hairstyle that hadn't changed since the sixties. "Some guy's bound to be a sucker for one of my personalities, eh?"

"But no guy in Connecticut, apparently," Max grumbled from the passenger seat.

"But it's California! You'll have the beach,"

"Connecticut has the beach."

"The sunshine,"

"Sun's in Connecticut too."

"Well, yes, but by the looks of it, you haven't seen it enough. Maybe you'll finally get some color on that smiling face of yours," her mother answered with her usual sarcasm. Max had to get it from somewhere.

Max didn't know why she even tried to reason with Mom anymore. When her mother wanted something, she got it. It was keeping it that was the problem.

Whenever mom decided she was bored of her current boyfriend (or things were getting too serious), it was a drop-everything-and-run event. Maxine had gotten to the point where she could tell it was going to happen again.

First, Mom would start talking about traveling, getting out and seeing the world. Going on a road trip. Heading out west. Or south. Or overseas. The destination didn't matter.

Then came the breakup. Sometimes there was no breakup at all, just a "we're moving," and that would be all it took to send the duo off to the next randomly-chosen place.

But they had never moved this far. What used to be confined to the state of Connecticut had broken state lines to take them here.

It was only getting worse, and what really sealed the deal was the fact that there was nothing she could really do about it. It had always been just she and her mother; why switch things up now?

"Max!" Came her mother's voice again, and she sighed in defeat, hiking a cardboard box up into her arms to carry it inside.

"See, there you go. A little manual labor won't kill ya," Mom said as she stepped into the foyer from the dining room. "That one goes to your room." She nodded her chin upstairs and came to lean against the wooden banister.

"Exciting," Max answered plainly, earning a roll from her mother's eyes as she started up the stairs.

Taking a right at the top, she pushed open the door to her new room. Normally, a new room would be exciting, but after at least ten new rooms in a short eighteen years, the enthusiasm started to take a nosedive.

It was small, with wood flooring and two dormer windows that looked out over the dusty driveway, the overgrown, parched grass at the front of the house, and far in the distance , the tiniest sliver of ocean. Mom had somehow managed to choose a place in the mountains that was within walking distance of absolutely nothing.

Not that Max was really dying to go anywhere. She was perfectly fine to stay in her room all day and flip through Rolling Stone, listen to records, and at this point: stare at the ceiling. Unfortunately, she wasn't her mother's daughter. It wasn't the greatest strategy for making friends, but it worked pretty well when you never spent more than a year or two in the same place.

Sending dust into the air as she set the box down, Max stepped over to the (also wood) blinds that covered the windows, pulled them down, and dimmed the sunlight in the room. That was more like it.

— • — • —

"You know, if you keep pouting like that, your face'll stay that way. I saw it on TV once," Mom said as she sat at the other end of the dinner table. For now, the dining room was empty except for the table, chairs, and the single overhead light, which made it look more fit for interrogating than eating.

"I'm not pouting," Max answered, poking around her takeout box.

"Hmm. I must be seeing things."

She didn't respond to that.

"Okay! That's it. I have an idea." Her mother pushed away from the table and stood, clapping her hands together. "I'm tired of watching you look miserable." Then, she turned and disappeared into the foyer for a moment, returning with her purse.

Max raised a brow. Mom and an idea were, as she knew from experience, a bad combination. She watched as her mother rifled through her bag, pulling out and flattening two crumpled twenty dollar bills on the table.

"You," Mom began, "are going to go out tonight, and you're going to do things that teenagers do. Drink, smoke, I don't care. But for my own sanity, don't let me find out about it." She wanted to say it was a little late to be worrying about her mother's sanity.

"I'm tired, really," Max tried to reason. "I think I'm just gonna go to—"

"Forty dollars to do whatever you want. I'm practically begging you to have fun." Her mother grabbed her hand and pressed the bills into it. "In fact, this is a motherly order. Not a request," she added, heading out into the foyer again as Max sat holding the cash in one hand and her takeout in the other. "I'll drop you off at that boardwalk we passed on the way in today." She called, then poked her head around the corner. "Hellooo! Let's go, that money won't spend itself."